Tesla’s Solar Roof Story: So Far, So Superficial

Its new solar shingles were shown off in a fictional neighborhood, with an unconvincing narrative to match.

Tesla chose to unveil its new solar roof technology on the fictional road of Wisteria Lane from the TV show Desperate Housewives. The choice may have proven apt: like the set that was used as a model for the new products, the technology for now remains rather superficial.

Elon Musk’s dream of an all-electric future is no secret: the man runs the electric-car company Tesla and solar-energy provider SolarCity, after all. But speaking at the launch event, which took place in one of the famous street sets at Universal Studios in Los Angeles, he explained that for his imagined future to become a reality, the whole thing—solar panels, energy storage, and electric car—“needs to be beautiful, affordable, and seamlessly integrated.”

Elon Musk sees a bright future for Tesla's latest product.

His new solar roof so far goes a long way to achieving the first of those three aims. Tesla's new tiles, made of quartz, are individual solar panels disguised to look like regular shingles. The idea is to turn your entire roof into an electricity-creating surface, while maintaining the looks that we’re all accustomed to. As the Verge shows, in that much the company has succeeded. They’re so far being manufactured in four designs, from rustic-looking Tuscan terracotta tiles to smooth, modern slates. They all look pretty great.

The effect is apparently made possible by a coating, developed alongside 3M, that allows light to pass through the upper surface in some directions but appears opaque when viewed from others. So from the sidewalk the tiles look like a regular roof, but sunlight from above can head straight through to the solar cell. That is undeniably smart.

But when it came to detail at the event, things were lacking. As Wired notes, Musk failed to talk about pricing, performance, availability, or installation.

Those factors will affect the adoption of its new tiles more than aesthetics will. So for now at least, it’s impossible to predict whether they’ll sell. Certainly, others have failed to make a go of solar shingles in the recent past: Dow Chemical scrapped its own initiative earlier this year, though its tiles weren't as easy on the eyes as Tesla’s.

Jamie CondliffeI’m the editor of news and commentary for MIT Technology Review. I put together our daily e-mail newsletter, The Download, from my base in London before everyone in the U.S. manages to wake up. I previously worked at New Scientist and Gizmodo, and I hold a PhD in engineering science from Oxford University.